Administering an injection is a process which presents a number of risks and challenges for users and healthcare professionals, both mental and physical. During manual insertion of an injection needle into an injection site, e.g. the skin of a patient, it may be difficult to avoid tilting and bending of the needle and the insertion may be slow thus causing pain.
There remains a need for an improved drive mechanism for a needle insertion arrangement.
EP 1 764 037 A1 discloses a device for collecting body fluids, the device having a pricking unit prickable in a body part, and a drive that is provided for forward and backward running pricking movement of the pricking unit. The drive has actuator wires on the basis of a shape memory alloy (SMA) for control of the pricking movement by a change of wire length. The wires serve as brake unit for braking of the backward movement of the pricking unit. The actuator wire forms a feed unit for forward movement of the pricking unit through heat-activated contraction. The drive has an actuator formed by an electro-active polymer.